Evidence page

Below are 7 arguments you can use when asking your MP to make a bill to end NHS outsourcing a priority:

1. If your MP is from the Labour Party, you could remind them of previous comments made by the Labour Party and key Labour figures. This is useful because Labour MPs are more likely to take action if they don’t see their action as rebellious against the policy objectives of the government:

Rachel Reeves: “Under Keir Starmer’s Labour government we will see the biggest wave of insourcing of public services for a generation”.

Wes Streeting: “Rachel Reeves talks a lot about radical insourcing and I’d like to see some of that because I think we are paying over the odds for some services, including in the NHS”

The Labour Party’s 2023 National Policy Forum document: “We will make the NHS the preferred provider of commissioned healthcare services and will end the reliance on outsourcing and cronyism that saw our public services weakened in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

2. We Own It research shows that for-profit private firms made £6.7 billion, or £10 million a week, in profits from NHS outsourcing contracts between January 2012 and May 2024. The NHS can build one operating theatre every single week, that could treat 100 extra patients per week, using the cash currently leaving the NHS in private profits.
3. A 2022 Oxford University research shows that outsourcing the simplest and most profitable NHS work reduces resources available for work in the NHS and leads to a worsening of the quality of patient care inside the NHS - leading to the “treatable” deaths of 557 people.
4. While private cleaning services for NHS hospitals appear cheaper on paper, studies show they lead to more hospital-acquired infections than when the job is done by in-house NHS cleaning staff. The NHS spends £1 billion a year treating people with infections they contracted while visiting NHS hospitals.
5. Outsourcing of NHS hospital catering services has been linked to poor health outcomes, and in 2019 examples of patients in Manchester and Liverpool who died because they were exposed to listeria in pre-packaged sandwiches provided by a private catering company make the point.
6. The best possible evidence is your own experience. Are you an NHS staff member (nurse, doctor, porter, cook, cleaner, security guard, etc), use your experience to show why outsourcing is bad for patients. 
7. Are you on an NHS waiting list, has your hospital appointment been recently cancelled, have you received substandard service from a private company delivering a service for the NHS? Use that experience to explain why you oppose NHS outsourcing.